Hermetism - Research Article from Encyclopedia of Religion

Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

The Corpus Hermeticum (henceforth referred to as C.H.) was written in the second and third centuries CE. It is a collection of eighteen treatises (I–XVIII). Annexed to it is the Asclepius (originally known in Greek as Logos Teleios and translated into Latin in the fourth century), which in early periods was falsely attributed to Apuleius of Madaura. Unlike the C.H. proper, the Asclepius has survived in an ancient Latin translation only (the original Greek version has never been found; a large part of it in Coptic translation surfaced only as late as the twentieth century, in the Nag Hammadi Library). The first (numbered I) of these eighteen treatises is the most famous. It deals with the creation of the world, whereas the rest are devoted to the soul's ascension through the celestial spheres and its divine sojourns, a process...